I’m the CEO and founder of Root Capital, a nonprofit agricultural lender that builds rural prosperity in the developing world. I began my career on Wall Street in Latin American corporate finance. Later, I had a brief stint as a journalist on the business beat in Mexico, where I became familiar with the challenges faced by agri-businesses and small-scale farmers who lacked access to capital and markets. I was on my way to Harvard Business School in the late nineties, when I took a detour and founded Root Capital. Since then, we’ve grown to over 100 employees, with clients across Latin America and Africa, and $100 million in assets. I’m a Skoll Fellow, an Ashoka Global Fellow, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2008 and one of Forbes’ “Impact 30” in 2011. I currently belong to the 2012 Henry Crown Fellowship Class of the Aspen Institute. As for academic credentials, I’ve got an M.S. in development economics from the London School of Economics and a B.A. from Yale University.

As you may recall, the fund was created by former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush in the aftermath of the epic 2010 earthquake that brought that small island nation to its knees. The fund raised $54 million that has now been distributed to more than 50 businesses and organizations to spur sustainable development and bridge the gap between short-term reconstruction needs and longer-term development.

Like Root Capital, the agricultural lender that I founded over a decade ago, the fund recognized that smallholder agriculture is one of the keys to rebuilding the shattered economy outside the over-burdened capital of Port -au-Prince.

Thanks to that alignment, Root Capital received $2 million from the fund for providing credit, market connections and financial management training to small agricultural businesses that provide the western hemisphere’s poorest farmers a better life. Since late 2010, we’ve financed eight rural enterprises that source from thousands of smallholder farmers producing coffee, cocoa, mangoes and essential oils used in cosmetics and perfumes. Our current clients represent 17,560 farmers supporting more than 87,000 household members.

The fact is, we wouldn’t be operating in Haiti if it weren’t for the Clinton Bush Haiti initiative, and support from The World We Want Foundation in Sweden. But even after the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund spends down its remaining funds and steps back, we will remain—even though Haiti is without a doubt the most demanding environment that we operate in across our entire global portfolio.

We have worked in 30 African, Latin American and Caribbean countries since 2000 and we’re bringing all that learning and innovation to address the challenges of building agricultural businesses that generate long-term social, economic and environmental sustainability in rural Haiti. It has been hard, truth to tell. The business challenges concentrated in that one small, impoverished nation are formidable—from weak government systems, to severe environmental degradation (less than 1.5 percent of land is forested in Haiti) to limited education and poor health status.

Consequently, most groups in Haiti, regardless of their business experience, need some form of financial management training intervention in order to grow and thrive.

Producer member at COOPCAB. (Image Credit: Root Capital)

Take COOPCAB, a 5,000 member fair trade coffee cooperative located in the mountainous village of Thiotte in southeast Haiti, an area of extreme poverty. COOPCAB is one of the strongest businesses we’ve seen in Haiti. With our financing it’s been able to increase its exports six-fold and source from an additional 1,000 coffee farmers, generating stable and increased incomes for its member base. The cooperative has even tied environmental conservation to economic benefit, introducing a reforestation program that delivers more than 100,000 coffee and tree seedlings to its producer members annually.

Yet even COOPCAB, which is managed by local Haitian farmers with little formal training in financial management and accounting, needs technical and financial assistance to reach its full potential.

As a consequence, we’ve had to innovate and hone our business model in Haiti, slowing our lending in the short term while accelerating and deepening our financial advisory services program. We’re making an investment that’s building long-term capacity among Haitian small businesses.

Just last week I received a call from Paul Altidor, who recently left the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund to become the new Haitian ambassador to the United States. Having observed our work on the ground, Ambassador Altidor asked Root Capital to join a consortium of practitioners to make formal policy recommendations that might help unlock much-needed agricultural finance from local banks and other sources of capital in Haiti. We fully intend to do so, and it’s a two way street.

Haiti, with all its thorny challenges, is spurring innovation at Root Capital. And as we retool our investment strategies to meet the most challenging of business environments, we are taking those new strategies and systems and applying them across our entire global operation, expanding our ability to reach ever more of the 500 million farmers living on less than $2 a day.

So as the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund prepares to cease its operations, we’d like to say thanks for serving as a catalyst, for helping build Haitian agriculture that empowers small-scale farmers and is truly sustainable in the long-term.

Watch this video to learn more about how Root Capital, with the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund’s support, is helping grow rural prosperity for small scale coffee producers belonging to the COOPCAB cooperative:

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Haiti’s tragic history makes cynicism understandable. However, at Root Capital we choose a different path. We know that the small and growing businesses we finance and train can transform rural communities and make lasting contributions to peace and prosperity. In the New Year, we are rolling out a series of “impact studies” — the first is a look at one of our Haitian clients, Coopcab. Transparency, good governance, better paying jobs, and investing in human capital are all just a start. Lets talk in 10-years. I hope the facts will help your cynicism fade.

Your organization is to be commeneded on efforts to make economic progress in Haiti despite the most dysfunctional government that is more prone to be focused on corruption and graft rather than fostering the healing of their own country. Building a solid foundation based on mutual trust and bringing various organizations together is what will best serve this country at this time. Keep it up!